German police seize Pirate Party servers, looking at Anon’s toolkit

German police have seized Pirate Party servers days before a major state …

Acting on a French request for assistance, German police today confiscated German Pirate Party servers—apparently hoping to search the prominent collaboration tool widely used within Anonymous to select targets for attack.

Authorities appear to be concerned about a possible attack on French energy giant EDF. The German Pirate Party said in a statement that it does not believe itself to be a target of the investigation and expressed willingness “within its legal obligations” to aid French police:

The [Pirate Party] Board does not have information that indicates the necessity to take all servers of the Pirate Party off-line. According to the information it has been provided with, only one single public service on a virtual server of the party was affected. The disconnection of all servers is a massive intrusion into the communications infrastructure of the sixth largest party in Germany. Considering the state elections taking place in Bremen in two days, this caused a severe political damage, which the Board condemns decisively.

In relation to the ongoing investigations, it will have to be verified whether the issued search warrant was actually appropriate, especially whether the principle of proportionality was followed. After all, this action has led to a large-scale breakdown of the technical infrastructure of the Pirate Party Germany. It will also have to be verified whether data have been affected that have no relation to the French investigation.

PiratenPad links in Anonymous chat rooms

The “one single public service” is apparently a reference to the collaborative text editing tool EtherPad. The German Pirate Party has long hosted an installation of the open source EtherPad under the name "PiratenPad," and the PiratenPad install was a particular favorite of Anonymous. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in Anonymous chat channels has seen various PiratenPad links used to choose targets, write manifestoes, and collect "dox" on enemies.

The EtherPad Foundation, which coordinates development of the underlying technology, said today, "We entirely support PiratenPad in its struggle, we believe that EtherPad deployments and really-real time collaborative document editing should be a right for all people, great and small."

The group believes the main reason for the raid is “because PiratenPad was being used by the group Anonymous to organize an attack," but notes that even this particular EtherPad install was used for legitimate purposes such as "structured debates around the protests in Spain, so this is a major cause for concern from a libertarian perspective."

Anonymous' main communications tools have been hit hard in the last two weeks. The main Internet Relay Chat servers, run by a group called AnonOps, were taken over last week by a dissident member and have only recently been relocated to a different domain name, which continues to have "issues." Now comes the attack on PiratenPad, though an AnonOps leader says that "police.de wasn't my fault."

Rick Falkvinge, who heads the Swedish Pirate Party, came to the defense of his piratical brethren today, writing, "Doing this to a democratic party—Germany’s sixth largest, actually—two days before an election is nothing short of a democratic sabotage. This shows why we must introduce understanding of information policy into the justice system all across Europe. A computer is not just something you can carry away; doing so has consequences. It is not a wrench, and yet the law (and police) treat it like any tool, just like a wrench."

In response to the takeover of its servers, the German Pirate Party has been tweeting up some sturm und drang today, and its "#servergate" hashtag is the second highest "trending" tag in Germany.

Not surprisingly, the main German police website is now down, as is the website of federal investigators (the BKA). As one Anon put it in a tweet, "#Anonymous to german police: 'Let me introduce myself...' #servergate #PoliceMeetsCocks."

But the German Pirate Party called the attacks inappropriate. "We condemn the totally inappropriate actions by investigators,” said Sebastian Mink, chair of the Chairman Pirate Party, “but these actions are not a reason to attack other websites and we distance ourselves from such attacks.”

52 Reader Comments

A lot of commenters in this thread have either missed the point of the article or are confusing "illegal" with "wrong". The seizing of the servers was probably criminal and at the very least wrong on every level, while there is no evidence that we know of that the activity on the servers was either wrong or illegal. The Pirate Party exists for the purpose of changing unjust laws in the first place, and since their end goals and persuasions are so often the same as Anonymous, some friendly provision is natural, as is dual membership. The Pirate Party may officially distance itself from Anon for political purposes as a necessary evil, but neither will forget that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, especially when that friend has been there all along being a friend anyway. Also, votes.

Good democracy and bad. Do what is profitable for the owners of this planet or face the consequences.

Free elections are worth what you paid.

Another slice of internet dies... but you cannot buy this kind of publicity(especially when 'news' outlets do not even mention it).

Many ways to serve cat.

With upcoming improvements in technology and consolidations we will be able to predict and optimize your 'decisions'.

We also walk dogs.

Thank you for your services.

"You do realise that more or less all the infrastructure in the world is used for criminal activities? If you are going to destroy all the infrastructure that could be misused there will be nothing left."

Apart from the two Pirate Party members of Sweden being in the EU parliament, and the dude in the Tunesian government.

Maybe you should check again if the Pirate Party of Germany didn't actually get someone elected? They did, fuck the trick questions.

Except they didnt win any seat, they got one because a sitting member of parliament switched parties. The german Pirate Party has, as far as I can tell, never even gotten close to the 5% watershed mark, they're results are mostly around or lower than 2% of the electorate.

The Pirate Party of Germany does not currently have mandates in their national parliament. But they do have 43 mandates in local parliaments. 39 of those were elected for the party, while the remaining four moved to the party after being elected. Here is the list of names and positions: http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Mandate

The Pirate Party exists for the purpose of changing unjust laws in the first place, and since their end goals and persuasions are so often the same as Anonymous, some friendly provision is natural, as is dual membership. The Pirate Party may officially distance itself from Anon for political purposes as a necessary evil, but neither will forget that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, especially when that friend has been there all along being a friend anyway.

The Pirate Party does not just distance itself from Anonymous for political purposes. There is a deep ideological difference.

The Pirate Party takes free speech seriously, even for those with unpopular opinions. In fact, we think that the right to free unpopular speech is the most important to defend. We find it highly unethical to try to suppress such speech, as Anonymous have done with their DDoS attacks.

The US Pirate Party (while it existed, before it fizzled in December when myself and another officer quit) used those services for it's internal work. I also know the UK Pirate Party does, and it was vital during the local elections and referendum earlier this month. In fact, it was even used to draft the open letter we wrote to Anonymous in November asking them to STOP the DDoS attacks.

I don't at all sanction the actions of the German police here, but it has to be said...

Note to self: when I next form a political party, remember to not let random anonymous people use my planning infrastructure to plan criminal activity. That will save me the effort of having to draft letters asking them to pretty please stop.

Anonymous can go anywhere at anytime to do our work. No one can stop us. So now we are all comfortable with the idea of telling people where they can go on the net and where they cant? ACTA anyone?

The Pirate Party does not just distance itself from Anonymous for political purposes. There is a deep ideological difference.The Pirate Party takes free speech seriously, even for those with unpopular opinions. In fact, we think that the right to free unpopular speech is the most important to defend. We find it highly unethical to try to suppress such speech, as Anonymous have done with their DDoS attacks.

I think what you meant to say was there is a deep ideological similarity, and then go on about how seriously Anon also takes free speech and freedom itself, and knows the difference between oppression and free speech, and how Anon promotes awareness of oppression with DDoS attacks to protect free speech (extra points if it's lulzy). There, fixed it for you.Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand . . . you're welcome.

Anonymous is the dirty little step child of the internets saying, "moar plz sir." All these groups like the Pirate Party, thej35t3r and his crew etc. Love to call us in when they need help. Screaming, "my freedoms are getting stripped away." However, once the battle is fought just like a Vietnam Vet they spit on us and disassociate when the battle is over. Bunch of opportunistic backbiters if you ask me. The fact is they like Anonymous because we are the ones who have the testicular fortitude to fight back. However, they themselves need to keep their appearance up to society. Heaven forbid they may look bad for a minute....oh no.....can't have that in the fight for freedom.

Freedom? This sounds like rhetoric for me. How has Anonymous made any of us freer? We're all living in exactly the same world as before, constrained by exactly the same rules as before. If Anonymous has had any effect at all (on freedom), it's so small on the world that we live in as to be barely noticeable. They haven't overturned any laws which constrained people's behaviour, nor freed anybody.